That distant land
by Aenigmatic
Summary: The evening had simply gone from bad to worse after he tried to make a joke about feeling like a one-man circus program over their appetisers. The disaster of the first date, according to Owen Grady. One-shot.


It's only when a mosquito lands a bite on his shin that Owen Grady starts to question the _El Loco Cabana_ as a decent place for a casual evening date. Not that the cabana hadn't delivered the _muy loco_ time that he'd expected when it had all to do with the company that he'd had for a very brief period of time.

The condensation on the beer bottle hasn't even fully evaporated in the humid evening air but all that really registers are the small but deep indentations in the mud that a woman's (expensive) high-heeled shoes have left.

At least they'd looked expensive, though it's hard to imagine Claire Dearing wearing anything bought from any run-of-the-mill department store.

She'd shown up looking like a million bucks in a turquoise dress with sparkly bits in her hair, with heels that reached the sky and enough makeup just to make him drool and the oxygen leach from his lungs. And after he'd finished gaping, they'd then both turned in horror to the ratty green T-shirt that had a tiny hole in the left armpit and the luminous board shorts that sat comfortably on his hips.

So sue him, he'd been called back to the compound when Blue had started acting up and there just wasn't any time to change. Or so that self-righteous thought had gone, because he'd stupidly assumed that Claire Dearing, of all people, would have understood how work simply was the priority.

He'd only begun to open his mouth to apologise for his attire when she slapped a pristine, weighted piece of paper between them.

 _A bloody itinerary._

She'd even included subheadings and footnotes in the APA referencing style, for God's sake.

Seriously, an _itinerary_?

He'd sworn then laughed in incredulity, realising that tactical error only when he saw the offense registering on her face. He'd backpedalled and furiously reminded himself that Ms. Dearing gone through all that trouble for just these few hours. That he should have had the better sense not to react so…reactively because others had very different definitions of dating, even though he'd never been with anyone as _radical_ as Claire. But wasn't hindsight always a bitch when it came to bestowing clarity when it was too late?

The evening had simply gone from bad to worse after he tried to make a joke about feeling like a one-man circus program over their appetisers.

Impulse makes him decide that he needs to buy a suit. Then he thinks of the money that he would rather splash on the flashy _Triumph_ , especially it was pretty much a given that Claire Dearing wouldn't be back anytime for a do-over.

oOo

Delta and Echo snipe at each other as he watches and records the sounds they make as they circle the training compound. Their howls and screeches split the air, joined by the distant cries of their other siblings confined to their enclosures for now.

A vicious form of play, but play nonetheless. A possible sign of restlessness owing to the limited space they are forced to call their natural habitat.

Owen keeps silent for now, the clicker in his hands and the tin bucket of raw meat next to his boot when he needs them to stop.

Cues, corrections, punishments and conditioning. Incentives and rewards. All of them tailored to the spectrum of behaviour that the raptors have so far exhibited.

A cynical part of him is tempted to compare it to military training as he depresses the clicker once, then twice.

As Alpha, he treads a fine line. The first sign of weakness and the fragile relationship that he'd spent months forging would splinter; to go at them with a heavy hand is to rule by subjugation, which pretty much means he should be finding a new occupation as dictator instead of behavioural specialist.

The raptors give a deafening bellow, then sprint to where he holds the raw shank over their heads. They tilt their heads then hop and catch the meat neatly between their razor sharp teeth when he lobs the morsels at them.

With his mind half on the disaster date, Owen thinks that when it comes to the basest of motivations, there is little that separates man from beast.

There is nothing natural about this place, from the Jurassic plants grown, to the way the dinosaurs have developed. They're all clinical studies, his raptors included, seen as ongoing experimentations where every interaction is catalogued and uploaded to the behavioural department's shared folders on _Velociraptor Development_.

Just another show of humanity's confidence in thinking forces larger than themselves could be controlled.

He understands more than he thought he ever could, especially after having glimpsed the measure of control Claire Dearing needs to exert over her personal life.

Meticulous record keeping is just another parameter of this project, a containment of sorts as twenty-first century humans gleefully bridge 65 million years with the unlimited funds of oil barons and large tech corporations. That distant, elusive land, brought to life under the hands of mad scientists and other crazies, where animals become assets and people, their controllers. Or so the illusion goes, on Isla Nublar.

oOo

He thinks constantly of the raptors that'd hatched months back and with whatever space there is left, he fills it with thoughts of a pretty but uptight redhead who runs the theme park's operations with an iron-fist and a near-military precision that he can appreciate.

Back to the raptors…and not that failure of the first (and probably only) date.

Imprinting on them is a monumentally difficult task despite the ease with which he speaks of the topic especially to sponsors, leaving out the injuries sustained and the bad days when nothing goes right.

As far as they are concerned, the imprinting process is a purely academic one, best done on large projector screens and fancy presentation software with animated, colourful infographics.

Owen is happy to keep it that way, even as he deals with the odd sense of contentment that he feels for this unusual job he's been in for the past year or so. And if the management is happy, even better.

It'd started out innocently though, with a small bug collection when a butterfly had flown into his closet at age 6. Then he'd found a blue beetle under his sister's bed. A large dragonfly in the warm climate of Florida during the summer vacation a year later.

He'd kept all of them and they eventually grew into a cabinet of curiosities that had made him immensely popular with the boys and a creep with the girls. It didn't bother him much and he'd continued on his merry way adding creature after creature on that expanding display shelf until the first date he'd scored in high school had hightailed it out of his room proclaiming him an 'abnormal dork whose growing muscles weren't enticing enough to score him a second round'.

But the bumpy teenage years had been as stable as the roiling sea around Costa Rica and it is often that he finds himself needing to reassess the foregone conclusion that people could be shallow that way.

Even now, he hesitates to place Claire Dearing in that box. Simply because he doesn't want to tell himself that it was actually over before it had really begun.

He'll work through this. Somehow. Then gets a little indignant when an opposing voice whispers that she has to meet him halfway.

Owen finds himself arguing with that inner voice—a sure sign that he needs more company of the human variety—until the faint roar of a car making its way down the dirt track halts that imaginary and lame conversation.

Speak of the devil in the sporty Mercedes, all dressed in white.

What he isn't prepared to do is to rehash the day it all fell to pieces, yet he does, filled with the urge to poke and prod as she does with an exuberance he can't really understand. So what begins as a stilted, polite conversation about determining the structural integrity of some enclosure degenerates into bickering filled with innuendos about that day-that-should-not-be-mentioned.

And damn it all, it's still the closest he has been to her in months.

Pity he still hasn't gotten down to looking at custom-tailored suits online.


End file.
